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                     Stop Funding Explosives, Activists Say

   by Selah Hennessy

   LONDON - During the past three years, financial institutions around the
   world have invested more than $40 billion in producers of banned
   cluster munitions, according to a [1]report published Thursday. The
   investors include Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche
   Bank and China Merchants Bank.
   According to the research paper, 137 private and public institutions
   have been investing in manufacturing companies that produce cluster
   munitions.
   Report co-author Roos Boer says making those investments is
   counterproductive.
   "If you want to rid the world of cluster munitions, it makes no sense
   to continue to invest in those weapons," said Boer, a policy analyst
   for the Netherlands-based campaign group IKV Pax Christi, which
   published the report along with the Belgium-based group FairFin.
   The global [2]Convention on Cluster Munitions bans the use, production,
   stockpiling and transfer of cluster bombs. More than 100 countries have
   signed on, but a number of manufacturers are known to still make the
   bombs, including a number of U.S.-based companies.
   "For countries that did not sign the treaty, it is of course completely
   legal to produce them," said Boer. "For example, for U.S. companies, it
   is not prohibited at all to produce cluster munitions because the
   United States has not signed the treaty."
   Laura Cheeseman, the director of the Cluster Munition Coalition in
   London, says the campaign to end investment and production of cluster
   munitions is vital because they kill indiscriminately.
   "The cluster bombs and the explosive bomblets in particular do not
   always explode on impact so they lie active and deadly on the ground,
   acting almost like de-facto landmines," said Cheeseman. "And they can
   be lying on rooftops, hanging in the trees, months, even years after a
   conflict has ended. So even when the fighting ends, these weapons
   continue to inflict suffering on the civilian population."
   But she says the tide appears to be turning. According to Thursday's
   report, 56 financial institutions have disinvested from cluster
   munitions producers. And, says Cheeseman, countries are filling the
   loophole that has permitted investments.
   "There are a number of countries, five countries, that have passed
   specific national legislation banning financing of cluster munitions
   production," she said. "But really we would like to see more countries.
   And there are around 20 countries that say they share this view that
   investment should be banned and what we would like to see is them
   moving forward and taking that extra step to legislate against it."
   The countries that have brought in new legislation are Belgium,
   Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg and New Zealand.
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   [3]http://www.voanews.com/content/activists_call_for_ban_on_explosive_i
   nvestments/1210965.html

References

   1. http://www.stopexplosiveinvestments.org/report
   2. http://www.clusterconvention.org/
   3. http://www.voanews.com/content/activists_call_for_ban_on_explosive_investments/1210965.html